Speaking of slime molds, and we were: they old.
Scientists study RNA, the keeper of genetic codes, to probe the evolution of life; they’re interested in ancestry, just like the Daughters of the American Revolution. They are the DAR of RNA. The more scientists dig into RNA, the more they find that a lot of stuff doesn’t fit into any previously assumed category, and that life is considerably weirder than anyone imagines. They no sooner give something a name and pedigree than they have to do it all over again. Whales are revealed to be related to hippos. Humans share an ancestor with sea squirts. Many critters simply resist classification.
Viruses, for all the nuisance they can kick up, are not even considered to be alive, although they are certainly undead. This is because they cannot exist for long or replicate themselves on their own outside of the hosts that do all the metabolic work. Billionaires, though, are still considered alive, in a sense.
But the slime mold is estimated to have been around for two billion years. Not the original slime mold; they do reproduce, under favorable conditions. They may produce a stalked reproductive structure described by easily-embarrassed scientists as “popsicle-shaped” and it is plumb full of spores that may have warts on them. They’re tough.
In fact, when conditions look dicey for reproduction—too dry, not enough food—they make themselves an escape survival pod called a sclerotium, a hard-shelled number in which a few spores wait it out. Apparently, a slime mold spore can stay dormant for 75 years and then germinate.
Let us pause here to salute the scientist who had the gumption and foresight to follow a dormant spore around for 75 years, waiting for the big reveal. True, this person probably had run out of thesis ideas. But much of science is based on good data collection and whoever this was had tenacity of a slime mold spore, and that probably made up for him being no fun at parties.
Someone invented something like a sclerotium for people in tsunami country, a sphere in which people can bob around until they sense they have fetched up somewhere, but they won’t have anything close to 75 years to bob. And yet, most people believe they are superior to slime molds.
But if slime molds do not have brains per se, they are intelligent. They form committees, they do lunch, they reach out and circle back, they push the envelope. The plasmodial slime molds, like Dog Vomit, accomplish much as a group of Socialist nuclei. Other slime molds exist as tiny Libertarian cells called “slugs” that each contain only one nucleus and motor about on their own quite nicely, reaching speeds of up to one millimeter per hour and doing what they damn please.
Which is fine for a while. But when it feels right—moisture available, ambience just so—they get together and make a whole reproduction unit. They quit eating, which is sensible if you’ve been on your own too long and have packed on the nanograms. They do not mate with each other: they glue themselves together to form a single reproductive structure. A third of them become the stalk and the rest climb up it and transform into spores.
It can only be every slug for itself for so long. You want to get anywhere, you gotta unionize.
‘Let us pause here to salute the scientist who had the gumption and foresight to follow a dormant spore around for 75 years, waiting for the big reveal. ‘
I’ve been bedazzled by the knowledge that cicadas stay underground for 13 or 17 years, then come out. I truly want to know if someone is following these things underground, and has the data to prove it.
Yes they the hell are. I remember my first 17-year cicada explosion! 1970, Arlington, Virginia.
You are, as always, brilliant in your descriptions. Totally humbled by slime molds and their ability to get on with life!
Me too! I don’t think I get that far in a year.
Congress take note
I feel like “sclerotium” must be related to “scrotum.”
“-sclero” means hard. “scrot” means skin. So. Kinda?
So my Lysol spray is a form of union busting?
Just spray that shit on scabs.
This looks like a good time to note that according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the split gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) has rather more than two sexes — it has an estimated 23,328 distinct mating types.
It just goes to show that the right-wing idiots who claim there are only 2 sexes are not familiar with most other organisms in Nature.